Anabaptist History (Day 20) Anabaptist Revival

All right, good morning. All right today. We're going to talk about the revival history among the Anabaptists Let's just start with prayer Dear Heavenly Father.

We thank you Lord that you do revive your church That you pour your Holy Spirit of Pentecost upon the church time and time again And I pray Lord that we can look at these examples and believe that you can do it again in our time So father I pray do it again with our generation and Raise up a church father that would truly glorify your name. It's in Jesus name. We pray.

Amen All right. All right today. We look at Anabaptist history revival history among the Anabaptists now I have I'll give my bias.

I'm a student of revival. I believe in revival and I Like to study it. I like to look at the way God has revived the church.

Here's my general theology on revival I believe that in the book of Acts God poured out his spirit in Pentecost and the church was created In Acts chapter 2 that happened also in Acts chapter 4 when the church said they prayed God did that again? but in each of the cases the Pentecost the revival at Pentecost was the birth of what? What the birth of the church and I believe that when revival truly brings forth the fruit of what it was supposed to do Then you're going to have the birth of a called-out people. There you go Being a church and I believe that's in its complete fruit, it doesn't always do this I still believe many time God pours out a revival on a people that doesn't always bring about the complete fruit and but nevertheless I'm a I believe in revival. I I've been I've studied revival history.

I've been to locker wells and seen the Welsh revival I've slept in Evan Roberts house and and been there and I've studied the Welsh revivals and revivals like that and Even there with that revival I'm reminded that I read a sermon a Keswick sermon Written ten years after the Welch revivals and Ari Torrey is preaching at Keswick in England and he's saying there revival in wells is gone ten years later and so a lot of times these revivals come and again, it doesn't produce the Called-out people that I believe is the whole purpose of a Pentecost experience that God is wanting to pour out on his church The saddest thing about Anabaptist revivals is that no one's telling the story You understand evangelicals are not going to tell our story the Catholics are not going to tell our story and All the evangelicals are probably the best people for giving out literature and telling their their, you know books and things like that they're not going to tell these stories and and the sad thing about is I believe as I've done study with revival amongst the Anabaptists But some of the most profound and some of the most lasting revivals in and church history has been amongst the Anabaptist people and so I just think we need to To keep that in mind that I think it's a it's a crying shame That even amongst our own people a lot of this history is is virtually unknown And so I would like to change that today and tell the people tell the our history the revival history among the Anabaptists Alright, let's start right from the beginning From the very first day you remember in Zurich We've gone through this whole five weeks and Zurich and after they were finally kicked out and said you're got to get out of the country They met there at whose house Felix Mons mother's house and Had a prayer meeting there and when they were there the Hutterian Chronicles Records that this is what broke out in that very first meeting It says one day when they were meeting this is which is January 21st 1525 Fear came over them and struck their hearts They fell on their knees before the Almighty God in heaven and called upon him who knows their hearts They prayed that God Granted to them to do his divine will and that he might have mercy on them neither flesh and blood Nor human wisdom compelled them They were well aware of what they would have to suffer for this and then it says the Spirit of God moved upon them to to act George Blaurock asked Conrad Grebel to baptize him and that was the start of the Anabaptist movement And it's typical the way we explain it from then Do you remember what happened that next day there that fire spread to the little city of Zola Cohn and there at Zola Cohn there?

Was instant response to the gospel people were baptized that very day And it seemed like the entire town got revived if you recall one of the different things They talked about in that and those days were they had daily communion They met what was it three or four times a week and God was reviving an entire town of Going out and spreading the word Conrad Conrad Grebel Do you remember he left there almost three days into the revival went out to st. Gaul and in st. Gaul he began to preach there do you remember what happened there from our lectures at st.

Gaul he began to preach there an entire town that for centuries had had a ritual and tradition on Easter morning of going out in a procession turned in their Idols and things and ended up all going down to the river and what I have here 500 were converted and baptized in the river on Easter morning following that the next few days 300 more were converted and Belts are Hoob Myers Bethesda Hoob Myers Church baptized by Wilhelm Rublin So already the revival was beginning to to pass through a lot of those different areas All that was happening that we talked about during those times all the persecution, but by 1527 to remember you were having conferences talking about sending out missionaries sending out people across the entire country And we had what was called the Martyrs Synod 60 of the ministers that were there only two were surviving in just a few years later from then by the time you get to 1529 up into when everybody was getting purged out of Switzerland and South Germany by the time you get to 1529 think of it now 12,000 people Were willing enough to say I'm gonna believe this I'm gonna fall I'm gonna Leave my house and home and 12,000 people made their way east all the way into Moravia It was remarkable when you think about the times and what that meant for them and the persecution that they had There in Moravia remember was the birth of the Moravian Anabaptists and there they gave rise to the Hutterites and the different Zeal the Hutterites gave in those early days is unprecedented It we hardly can can gleam everything from just the Chronicles but time and time again as you thumb through the Chronicles you see a Burden for missions a burden for their preaching and they're going out and when you look at the next few decades of the tens or 20 or 30 communities entire communities that were all over the Moravian area It just is astounding on how much this revival fire was growing in their time During these during these times You just have to stop and wonder and ask the question of Scripture.

What has God wrought? what has he done and when you see what God can do to a people who are completely dedicated to serving him and Living for his kingdom it is astounding and it's astounding over and over again That's what I hope to show in this in this message There are times in the church and there is today we may be in one of those times a day I would I would venture to say we probably are when the spiritual tide has got a little low even those those flaming Moravians Hutterites When things began to finally through persecution through deep disease through warfare were dwindled down to just a tiny little remnant Do you remember what brought them back on the map?

Revival a revival in Germany in a Lutheran Church brought an entire new set of people that were were dedicated to to Living out the gospel in the fullest had a problem they had a revival that they believed that Jesus meant every word he said and when the when the Queen was said yeah, you can have this little place over there and be loose good Lutheran But you have to swear at least an oath of allegiance. They couldn't do it Jesus said they couldn't from there They met with the very tiny last spark of the Hutterites and from those people They got the old writings of the Hutterites and said this is great Let's do it and the entire Hutterites have known today have been revived from that from that people.

That's in page 377 of volume 2 and the and the Hutterian Chronicles that entire revival there there when those things were happening and And all those ups and downs of the different things amongst the Moravian people meanwhile back in Switzerland Think of the different times that were happening there in Switzerland when people started to Get kicked into different areas and it was hard and the persecution sometimes the spiritual temperature would drop down Sometimes it would start making little compromises sometimes the the the it would start to be Profitable and they would start to make money and things would start to compromise but over and over again God brought revival in in Switzerland in Zurich itself coming into the 1600s just when times were getting a little bit low they God raised up a bishop by the name of Hans Landis and an old bishop who they who the Reformers Executed in in Zurich cut his head off and even in their own records You remember from our lectures even in our own lecture even in our on their own records They mentioned that they put to death a godly man and that he was a minister of the Church of God and from there They never had another execution in the town of Zurich, but from that From that revived the people again.

You had people do you remember a Flag Staff bear flag bearer Lieutenant Heinrich Frick there in the Zurich area was revived by a domino effect of the things that happened from Hans Landis and he became a Powerful missionary and evangelist throughout the different areas and started to begin to revive people Eventually reviving people to it got to another famous evangelist by the name of Ulrich Muller Who Ulrich Muller then started traveling around the burn area all around here right when things were getting kind of really low in Spiritual temperature and the Emmental valleys in the Palatinate of Germany God raised up Ulrich Muller who began to to evangelize people and 200 names still with us today and The Anabaptists were brought in during that time period under the preaching of the Ulrich Muller he then if you remember baptized Jacob Amman and became the the It became the Pre-church if you would of what became known as of this very tenacious group that would not compromise called the Amish It was happening under this revival that happened under Ulrich Muller powerful times powerful times at the church continually used These types of preachings these types of times of awakening to wake up the church to genuine following of Christ But in each of these times there was there was things that they had to deal with there was Extremes that might have gone one way or the other but every time it seems like the burden the Christ that I see in these revivals the beauty of these revivals is that again my message through this whole five weeks was Focusing on Jesus Christ and his message being alive today in Everything truly the all things of Christ and also as the all things of Christ tell us to do this all things of Christ produces a church a city and the kingdom of God a community of people in the world that are to be salt and light a light upon the hill and this concept of a true revival that brings forth its true fruit of a church of a community of a called-out people is the is what marks the most impressive things of the Anabaptist revival And that's what I see here with with these revivals even With Ulrich Miller the early at the early Amish and those sorts of things the fire goes to Holland and Hollanbury remember it started off kind of rough didn't it remember our lectures about Holland it started off kind of rough and As the fire went to Holland Milky or Hoffman Took the the gospel up to the very next bordering town of Holland to Emden and There began to preach the gospel and there a revival broke out and there was a huge response Remember even some of the magistrate and some of the things were getting converted and said what do we do with this message that we were? given At that time there was then all kind of extremes back and forth when those revival fires hit Holland and hit that northern Germany area they hardly know what they hardly knew what to do with it.

It was it was then Satan tried to bring in a very Negative thing to the church and he does this I believe time and time again And you remember what he did in Holland He brought the whole Munster tragedy chaos to the church and that made the true church look, you know And all this thing people were looking at it, but faithful brethren faithful sisters Will be able to take the scriptures and say no we're going to continue to focus on Jesus Christ and again the revival fires Spread again, even after the chaos of Munster and all the things that happened there But again, I see this as an impressive time of what God was was doing with his people over and over again During that same time in Holland.

You remember a man by the name of Leonard Bowen's There's a powerful evangelist he catalogs we have the names and the dates catalogs of going from town to town on horseback on carriage by foot and baptized himself over to over ten thousand two hundred converts with the names logged in his book of His activity around Holland. This is the kind of thing. It's impressive we read the stories about the the circuit riders and it's impressive we tell the stories of the early Methodist, but It's a shame that we don't know some of these these stories of men like Men like balance who did those sorts of things and Leonhard bowens truly was remarkable in his evangelism fire that that he spread so yeah, it's it's impressive when you when you begin to take a Step back and look at the way that God Ministered to these people time and time again Same way during that same time minnow Simons himself baptizing hundreds, but even more so leading out little fellowships and and holding meetings in the in the field and the and the Forest and all those different places that was able to rise up a church of people of God that wanted to serve him in Totality and so it was again time and time again.

You see that so here we had Revival fire in Switzerland in France which is where a lot of the Amish came from the Alsace and over Moravia Revival fires spreading through with the Hutterites all the way through to the east of Transylvania and finally into Russia and in the Far East we get up to up to Holland with balance and milk or milk your Hoffman and minnow Simons and Over and over again We see many times the start of these things was a pouring out of God's Spirit upon the church to waken the people to say Oh, we're just living in complacency. We're living in sin and God woke up the church over and over again The Dutch had their ups and downs. We looked at the Dutch the Holland people They had their ups and downs and then eventually they head over to Holland I mean, excuse me, they head from the Holland is a Dutch and they headed over to to Poland and they and the area is closer to Poland and Prussia and those sort of places and there we see some interesting things with revival close to this area was Herne hood and when Zinzendorf was having his revivals in 1740 the Mennonites here actually came under the leadership of the Herne hood ministers there and had a an interesting influence on the mission life and the Revival life of what became the Russian Mennonites later It's a interesting part of history.

They then take that to Russia they have their ups and downs and one of the things that I notice as we look at the Russians and We see some of the things that they they ran into some of the things that brought them down. I think are things we face today when they finally grew in prosperity when they allowed some of the communities that Had different not all the communities were the same some had more involvement with the political government than others particularly Corny's who was a extremely wealthy man and made his wealth with different agricultural things and he wanted a lot of connections with the Russian government and it was in his his communities that had some of the most abuse of The different whippings and things like that that the Russian government brought into the to the communities but in that still The times are low times are getting Down God raised up people that said they wanted to believe the gospel with everything they had and It was truly impressive men by the name of here's one Heinrich Dirks a Russian Mennonite Who spent some time on the mission field and as he spent some time in the mission field he came back and I read a Part of this to you at the end of our Russian Mennonite lecture And as he came back he preached to the Russian Mennonites And I'm going to give you a little excerpt of this again in this context of revival He said to them Preaching at a mission conference. He starts off the whole mission conference with this words.

He says Jesus preaching quoting the scriptures. I came to cast fire upon the earth and Oh how I would it were already kindled and then he comments on this Heinrich Dirks comments Certainly the fire Jesus came to kindle on the earth was not a natural one. No, it was a supernatural spiritual fire the fire of the knowledge of God the fire of truth and love The fire of eternal life and the Holy Spirit he goes on.

Yeah, I like listen to his little formula here I like it take the knowledge of God All right. Take truth and Love take eternal life and the Holy Spirit together and the Jesus fire breaks out Amen, this fire burned within him the Lord this fire burned within him before the Foundation of the world this fire brought him from heaven to earth It drove him while here to spark it and fan it to flame in the hearts of his fellow men Jesus's fire already burns in many believers heart But oh, he says to the Russians there may it burn in our hearts as well Amen So this appeal to the church over and over again I see and God calling these preachers to a a dead sleepy church and to wake them up Any thoughts or questions before we come to America now? No, I'm on a roll. So, you know I get excited about this stuff.

So bear with me here. All right Come to America you start off with a bit of a challenge if you remember with our lecture yesterday They didn't come as a community a lot of times most of times they didn't come You know as one certain group so a lot of times you had a scattered approach of what the Mennonites were in America Particularly John D Roth says in the in the in the outskirts areas even more so where people quickly giving up their their Anabaptist convictions about the Jesus teachings war oaths and things like that slavery And so it got off to sort of a hard start but God was faithful and he brought revival again We just submit different examples of The different the different things remember in those times They had church in the Lancaster County area and this different places where a lot of Mennonites were mainly Lancaster County I'm talking about early enough now is that church only once every two weeks If you live in the country, maybe only once every four weeks Compare that to Zola Cohen where you had church four times a week or in the Moravia four times a week but here you had church maybe one time every four weeks that led to a Spiritual decline and it also led to a bit of formalism a missionary a Moravian missionary in 1748 looking at some of the Mennonites in Virginia which would have been one of those on the outskirts said many Germans live here. Most of them are Minnestons Mennonites who are in a bad condition Nearly all religious nearly all religious earnestness and zeal is extinguished among them He didn't like what he saw there in the 1750s in many places real conversion had begun to decline And this was the same problem facing Jonathan Edwards when he began to bring his revivals to the Northeast The Calvinist people the Puritans had had began to grow it rich they had began to grow complacent and this was also happening to our Anabaptist people as well and We see this one ex-Mennonite in 1770 speaking of his his departure said the parents sometimes insist on their children being baptized Before they will consent to their marriage, which I wish they would not lest any be forced into a thing Which should be a matter of personal choice following conviction and cause of conscience he's saying this whole idea of just Getting baptized to marry the church is a dangerous thing and he's saying that in 17 was that 50 or so It's good to take note of that another one Christian Kaufman another one who who was grieving in that time period 1759 talks about his Baptism classes that he went to and he records it in his diary in 1759 and he says this he says when the time Came for me to come forward for his examination I was asked what Promoted me to desire baptism as I began freely and honest to relate how I was Exercised and that I confidently believed that according to the scriptures.

It is a duty of man to observe it I was told that'll do I may withdraw they have no time to spare as they have more yet to examine This is the history of my preparation of baptism. I thought my god have mercy And so that was his baptism class All right, just to give you a little glimpse the populations growing the ministers are busy, you know There's all these things going on and things are beginning to grow lax At least in some areas we have we have records of and so revival begins to happen the first known revivalist amongst the Mennonites is a man by the name of Martin Bowen and There's this little nice picture there. I have for you And he is the first known Mennonite to become active in the revivalist movement of the 1700s He was born in Peck way settlement in Lancaster County He joined the Berryland congregation where he was ordained by lot to the ministry in 1756 like many other young ministers chosen his fashion He felt humbled and unworthy of his calling and he began to just sit and wonder What am I going to preach when I come to the pulpit and and he met with God over this and it says here He wrote to be a preacher and yet have nothing to preach nor to say but to stammer out a few words and then be Obliged to take my seat is shame and remorse While praying for divine aid in preaching, however God began to reveal to him a bigger need in his life And that bigger need was a genuine and true salvation Forget this preaching business.

Let's have a genuine salvation and he gives this in his account He says my my salvation followed me wherever I went My mind became alarmed. I felt and saw myself a poor sinner. I was lost my agony became great I was plowing in the field and kneeled down at each end of the furrow to pray the word lost Lost there's a German there went everywhere around me midway in the field I could go on no longer but sank behind the plow crying Lord save I am lost and Again, and the thought came a voice to me I am come to seek and to save that which is lost in a moment a stream of joy poured over me hallelujah and He had this genuine conversion the following Sunday.

He was so excited He eagerly wanted to tell his congregation there and we're in the revival of the people and it was reported that it was well-received The congregation we don't get a lot of details was there was much audible weeping His preaching went on in this in this way He began to preach in anointed fashion and eventually he was actually made bishop of the Mennonites in this area in 1759 And then something happened there in the valley in the Virginia Shenandoah Valley one of the congregations came under the preaching of George Whitfield and beginning to get Very excited about this conversion. The ministers didn't know what to do about it. So they felt challenged by it They said well, let's call up Lancaster County and let's see if we can get somebody to come down here and talk these guys Out of it.

So Lancaster County chose Martin Bowen So he went down there to begin to preach to listen to them and listen to their testimonies and he reports that all he could Do is encourage them Well, I think you've got genuine conversion. This is this is revival happening there And and he writes that that was a very important moment for him because he felt confirmed in the Spirit God is doing something. It's confirmed.

It's happening in their life and it's happening in my life life And that's what he began to do Is to proclaim it more and so he got back to Lancaster and instead of having church once of every two weeks He started to have revival services and this Mennonite bishop now is having revival services to the church that met once or twice a month Bohm held services weekly and every Sunday. I mean all the weekdays and then every Sunday the response was great He also started allowing traveling revivalist preachers show share the pulpit with him Now this would later cause some trouble Not only was he now beginning to preach he was now beginning to let the the Methodist preachers come and preach in the pulpit with him Okay All right. There's a little there's interesting little notes in that time period people wrote concerning this time period one wrote About these big meetings were attended by crowds of people Some came from a great distance The host the person who owns the farm at whose house the meetings were held were not scared And that was all capital letters in the original They were not scared when they saw carriages wagons and vehicles of all sizes and in use drawn by four-legged animals and loaded with Saints and sinners coming to the meetings Some came to see and to end some to be seen others to hear preaching in many instances From one to two hundred persons were entertained and fed during the meetings together with their horses And so it just gives you a little insight of this revival that's happening in Lancaster County in the 1750s and then it happened there in Landis Valley if you go down to 72 and Landis Valley meeting at Isaac Long's barn, there's a picture of it It was Pentecost Now again Pentecost is what the birth of the church and I believe that he desires us to draw into brotherhood And that type of thing when that happens.

Well, it was Pentecost Sunday 1767 and an overflow crowd heard Bowen and several Virginia preachers that were also there one in particular You should note is Philip Otterbein. He was a Methodist minister a good friend of Francis Asbury and such and he was there and he began to preach and Otterbein was so impressed with his preaching that and he he came up and hugged Baum and said veer since brooder we are brothers and The actually the United Brethren Church sees that as their birthday Because of the connection between those two, but it was a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit and many people were converted It was an exciting time This had lasting effects on the Anabaptist congregations across Lancaster County at another meeting in a Lancaster meeting and Another Lancaster County meeting a minister another Methodist minister by the name of Benjamin Abbott records in his journal I found this little piece of interesting information in the March of 1781 that he was at one of these Bowen revival preachings and went on from day to day into the night he said in one case people fell on the floor and their groans and moans could be heard at a great distance from the preaching place and then he said as they did this to kind of like bring the service to the end and Song leader would come up and to to to you know, okay Let's start singing a song, you know like Jacob would come up here and start singing a song and he fell down and the next one came up and he fell down and There was a succession of these things that were beginning to happen and and he says this this Methodist minister even writes I have never seen the Lord work in this way before now a word about slaying the spirit in the 1750s I As I read revival history, I do think it's very different than what we hear today amongst cares Charismatics what I read in these days where people so burdened from their sin That they it was like they just fell over because of they were they couldn't handle this conviction of sin until they got it off very different than today where it's a Fancy thing to do just to get excited the reports of these slains in the spirits in the 1750s were of extremely serious and self self introspective type of thing of God convicting of sin and So keep that in mind as you read some of these things again You can do with it what you want, but it was impressive. No God certainly dealt with people so the Lancaster bishops now are starting to say okay, but It's 1775.

We're hearing a lot of ruckus. You're having guys in your pulpit that are also Part of the Revolution. What are you doing? And the Lancaster bishops began to get a little concerned most books that talk about them there make them look like bad guys I don't know.

I I'm tossed to and fro by this time period The Revolutionary War was serious They were coming against the British crown and rebellion against the crown several things were happening And I think the Lancaster bishops were cautious I had a right to be cautious And if these ministers would have bowed their heart, I think the the outcome could have been different The association with the other ministers concerned the Mennonites because of this some of the doors were closed to him Boehm did not accept the council of the brethren. He wrote in his Journal that some of the men in this meeting houses were closed against me. Nevertheless.

I was received in other places the Lancaster County Bishops started to talk with Boehm at the conference Lancaster bishops it was it was written at a they had a conference to talk to him quote It is a well-known fact that between us and Martin Boehm There is in many points a difference of view and we have at times for several years already labored to become More of one mind and to understand each other better. I felt that was a decent response and they asked him All we're asking you to do is make sure that when you preach that you preach the all things of Christ He kind of agreed to it said I'm a weakened person I'll try the best I can but he never really changed by the time 1777 hit and the Revolutionary War was was in line He seemed to be making no differences with the war finally the the bishops of Lancaster County excommunicated him in 1777 this was the same time period that you remember from yesterday's lecture that they began to call the Dutch Mennonites in Holland and saying help us produce the martyrs mirror here in America We need to revive our people and understanding our heritage and they had the effort of brethren Print the martyrs mirror. It was an interesting thing and so he he ended up forming together with Otterbein the early Methodist the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and Was a very impressive preacher still continued to go different places And it said that well, it's recorded that Bishop Francis Asbury The first Methodist bishop in America was who preached at his funeral So he obviously had a lot of friends there in that place another interesting one just going right on I got it.

I want you to hear these things Martin Kaufman the Shenandoah Valley a Minister there Began to have revival because of a John Coons a Baptist preacher came by and as they were there Martin Kaufman got born again got converted and got rebaptized and started entering in fellowship with the Baptist and Started holding more and more meetings more revival was happening and things started to to to go even further Again, the the Lancaster bishops came to him and it was said this it's recorded about this is what the Lancaster bishops said to him When the ministers from Pennsylvania arrived they attempted to persuade Coons that Christians ought not to go to war hold slaves Or take legal oaths that these things were forbidden Coons then excuse me Then he Kaufman then replied to the bishops about their salvation asking for their testimony. He didn't get a clear answer So he said well I'm I'm not gonna listen to you and they went back to Lancaster without a the result that they wanted But he was a godly man. He was a revived man.

He also knew his Bible then hit 1776 for him as well and he began to say I can't do this I can't let my congregations do this in the slavery that I see the the oath-taking to the country and at that time the Baptists And San Ando a valley were all required to take an oath of allegiance to the to the Continental Army He wouldn't do it. And so the bishops tried to say to him. This is a secondary matter.

These are not the important things You're focusing on the minor things. He said these aren't minor things These are the things of Christ and so nothing of Christ is minor. And so his church broke off and From the Baptist and began having little congregations in the Shenandoah Valley little Anabaptist revived congregations in the Shenandoah Valley Completely by themself for quite some time Interesting little group never hear much about Next interesting guy is Christian newcomer another one of these Mennonites that were revived His testimony goes that one day he was out in the field again, and he was eating on a peach And when he was eating on the peach, he Aspirated he sucked in the the peach seed and he thought he was gonna die And so as he thought he was gonna die He threw himself in an early Heimlich maneuver against a tree and it dislodged the the peach seed and he lived So it had a profound experience on him as he went on that really made him think about his his soul and He began to just over and over think about the sin and was he ready to meet God? Then finally during a thunderstorm one time when he was crying out to God he felt that he had the peace of God with him little later he He wanted to go to his congregation and tell them he about what happened in the congregation kind of didn't understand Where is that? This is the Groffdale Mennonites Congregation and they finally just say hey just get baptized join the church.

He did that He still has his burden for something more something more. He finally goes and talks to a minister he doesn't get a right answer and eventually moves away and There moved away he gets sick again And he thought I got to come back and preach to Groffdale So he came back he preached to the Groffdale Mennonite Church and the response was good again It says they don't get a lot of reports, but there was much crying and it was well-received but after that it went further and further and It was during that time that he felt that he could no longer Minister amongst those people and it was in some of his revivals. He began a preacher then he began to be a preacher again, where some of the very unusual outpourings that were happening One of the some of the things that are recorded People that attended his services quote the people jumping up shouting and praising God in a manner as would never witnessed before In October of the same year.

This is 1801 He preached at a congregation at Christian Hershey's barn I guess where old and young were like persons intoxicating shouting and jumping and ecstatic of joy And all these different cases November 10th 16th and 1920 in 1803 Again, more of these outpourings of the falling out and those sort of things were happening As you can imagine This this began to have different effects on the Lancaster bishops and different types of thing It wasn't always well received. He then did join up with the United Brethren just a few others. I'm just going to mention their name John needed in the Dauphin County area revival struck there and they called them for a while the needy glides people who followed him and he eventually Grew Away from the church and joined the United Brethren as well But you're not a brother again where these revived Methodists at this time and they did snatch up a lot of the Mennonites after a while Jacob Brunk interesting little thing is that he's the Descendant way before the George Brunks that it's recorded that he many times had newcomer in several revivals in his barn preaching or visiting Him with with him there.

I'm at least five times between 1797 and 1819. He records that and Then the last one that I'll mention of this colonial period was Felix light Interesting guy up in the more Lebanon County and in Lancaster County a little bit Felix light was a Mennonite Preacher who then preached for 25 years revival preaching amongst the Lancaster Mennonites and up in Lebanon he eventually was donated some land to build a Mennonite Church in Lebanon and preached up there to eventually his whole congregation then merged out of the Lancaster Church as well, so it's interesting That's the colonial period even the United Brethren who was started with these Francis Asbury and all these guys half of their ministers when they started this thing were either Mennonite or Amish converts when they when they started their their Denomination so that's the Period there of the colonial period. Let me finish one more thing and then we'll take a quick break Through that time a Christian Burke holder, he was a bishop of Lancaster Bishop and lived from 1746 to 1809 and he had a a burden to try to take truth and fire and he started giving some lectures to the youth about a true conversion and What it meant to have true conversion trying to say yes Let's have a true conversion and he speaks in his books about the need for true conversion but let's not forget that it makes us look like Jesus and he tried to make bring the Mennonite Church back to seeing Jesus in reality So that's the colonial period any quick questions Powerful time of God of God working let's take a quick break and we're going to come back to what Harold S Bender calls the Mennonite.

All right. Welcome back Again, I have a burden to get these things out. And so I want you to hear these things I want you to have the paper there because I think that we've been beat around as a people way too long and thinking this isn't part of our heritage and it very much is part of our heritage and I Think it's important part of our heritage All right.

Again, I appreciate Christian Burke holder and his trying to bring balance because it was hard I mean some of these people were giving up the things of Christ Some of them weren't and you know again Pentecost brings us to Christ and have people of Christ but now we go to the phase that Harold S Bender calls the Mennonite Great Awakening he coined that term and The figure that stands out the most of those is a man by the name of John Funk and there's a picture that I have On him there of him there John Funk born on 6 April 6 1835 in the in Burke's Bucks County, Pennsylvania Where he grew up on a farm there for 22 years didn't have a lot of high education he was going to be a school teacher and went to Freeland Seminary probably a School probably to be truthfully a lot like faith builders here It was just a school that helped people become teachers or such in seminary and that type of thing preachers and his home community But later he decided to go into the lumber business and he went to Chicago and that's where everything changed in Chicago It was the time of DL Moody and DL Moody's revivals were sweeping through Chicago and young John Funk went to one of these revivals and he got converted and he got seriously converted and then he began to follow Moody around and began to Ask about his you know different things and was very impressed by his Sunday school his he watched how he a disseminated literature He watched how he gathered disciples of men's together and just the organization in the way the deal Moody did himself And he probably related a lot deal Moody also wasn't a very educated man Classically educated and he probably related to Moody a lot and he took that then and brought it back into the Mennonites Fortunately for us. I I think that he tried very much to bring it not with the evangelicalism that that Moody would have sided with although he did He bring the revival fire. I will say this about Moody.

There's an interesting quote by DL Moody when he was asked about warfare He says he said as for me, I'm with the Quakers I would I could never be able to shoot another man and that was DL Moody's response So you wonder about some of these talks even with Funk? Back and forth in those early days of Moody So Moody now comes back and he's bringing this revived fire into a church there in the Midwest Which is very lethargic and he starts to to just be on fire He began his house of operation with a publishing house in Elkhart, Indiana, and it was a great influence He started to produce the paper the first Mennonite paper ever out Herald of Truth. He Published it in both English and German and then he had a gift and he of recognizing talent Sometimes in our circles we have men that rise to power rise to influence However, you want to word it and they're scared of everybody else not Funk He had recognized talent and bring them to himself and And and work with them and allow them to work together And that was a powerful gift of his one of the particular people that he discovered and brought was JS Kaufman Kaufman with a C Who became the revival preacher of the Mennonite Church in this time period the Anabaptist Church in this time period? He also found John horse a writer and historian L Bender GL Bender who was a mission leader? H a Moomaw the founder of the whole Elkhart in Institute which became Goshen University today He started out helping the poor with the Mennonite aid programs at one of the meetings that he was at they they launched their first mission to India and began encouraging the Mennonites to go out into all the world and it was very impressive the kind of things that Hit funk was able to to do in just a small time, but I'd like to take a note about something that he did Linda knew is here. He always says to me.

It was here earlier this week. The best things in life are copied and improved upon Okay, quit thinking we have to create the world. He's Recreate the wheel he saw Moody.

He saw okay Hmm hmm probably some things he didn't like hmm But he took that pattern and put it into practice one of the reasons why I study history and one of the reasons why I want you to study history is to say Wow, there are different ways that we could be doing this There's more effective ways when I read what the Moravian Anabaptist did when I read about what some of these people did I don't just read it and say oh wow I read it and say oh we can do this and that's an example of what funk did he took something that worked and put It into practice What's that the best things in life are copied and improved upon? That's the Japanese Okay, well we can't even say that anymore they've gone way beyond this All right Then he also brought in revivals the whole concept of this Moody revival John funk brought in and particularly he brought he found that JS Kaufman and brought him to bring in the revivals in 1872 a revival meeting in Masontown, Pennsylvania Daniel Brenneman and and bronc gave that first revival meeting in the out and the results from that were powerful the inch the great thing about funk again is the idea of truth and fire Kind of the balance that Christian Burkholder tried to make was the idea Okay, we've got these things revived, but he didn't want to give up his heritage either He didn't want to give up his heritage. He published the the martyrs mirror in both German and English he started producing these Mennonite journals and German in English he He did all these things to try to to have a people have a heritage But a heritage that was on fire and that can do things and that's a rare balance Critics today would say that he still made the church have an evangelical flavor And my looks at him, I think some of that perhaps might be fair to say but nonetheless He More than anybody else tried I think to have the balance between revival fire and the truth and the things that I've read in his in his writings I've been very impressed with Which brings us now to his friend that he brought to Preach with him John s Kaufman. There's a nice picture of him right there and Kaufman had the burden to And here we have written in his one of his journals I'm John s Kaufman puts it like this about the burden that he had for his people.

He said today in 1881 he said this today I have been thinking much of the necessity of the church's making a more Active effort to make converts when we see what others are doing and see the success that follows their efforts We are sorely grieved at the apathy of our members on the subject of evangelism Interesting, so he had this burden He was the first one to bring in the idea of a protracted meeting. You know what that means? Protracted meetings mean they go on and on and on and on and on the Mennonites didn't like meetings that went on and on And on and on they're like, all right already. It's enough do it be done with it, but a Kaufman Wanted to do that it also they saw some of the abuse of the of the Methodists and that type of thing They were scared of it.

But but the nice thing about Kaufman is that the reports talk about him as being a very respectful man a very a Smart man and he would work with bishops He would work with ministers and he was very much desired to raise up the church and not destroy the church That's a rare combination many people who Raised with this kind of anointing and this kind of influence speak against the church try to break down the church not Kaufman And so because of that it said of him he was able to open into areas that were never available to other people he actually brought unions between divisions of Mennonites and Amish that were there in the area was able to preach in these circles that no one could preach in before Because he had a respectful attitude and because he had a true passion that came out a desire to build up the church He even particularly was concerned about all these little churches out in the out in the West and he would go out there And do his meetings out amongst these little churches to try to raise up the church in his time It was interesting he was an interesting man and he died just in 51 of Some sort of tumor or something in his stomach. And so he had a short life, but the life that he gave was powerful evangelist Just a few others I just named their names Also a D Wenger, I wish I had more time to talk about him Jacob Burkhard were traveling evangelist and a D Wenger was ones early ones that tried to bring these protracted meetings and bring these revivals into Lancaster County Lancaster County still being a little bit more cautious some letters from the time period Here's a letter that was written from Kaufman to a D Wenger. It just kind of gives you an insight to the things that made them tick Here's a letter.

He says I am glad that the Mennonite Church Has waked up to the necessity of establishing her institutions and doing vigorous Evangelistic and mission work. I think I have lived for this. He said amen.

I think he did Another one from another Revivalist written to a D Wenger. He said we would like to have at least Two weeks with the Thomas district. Listen to the way they word this here The Lutherans have taken some of our young people and we would like to check this and possibly regain a few Amen, they're after your youth go get them So we're gonna hold some meetings in this area.

We're gonna bring revival in here. We're gonna get our youth back Wow, I I'm impressed with that. I think that that's um That's the kind of attitude ministers should have Harold S Bender speaking of this whole time period and what all happened to the Mennonite Church in this time period and gave this very Celebrated response.

I think this is an unpublished Work he says this about the Great Awakening. He says this was the time of great evangelistic harvest in the church It was the time of the founding of the first missionaries and charitable institutions at home and abroad In America that is the time when the beginning of a real church literature was created and church publishing Interests were established on a sound and substantial basis It was a time when our first two schools were founded and when our boards of mission education and publication were organized It was a time when the young people's Meeting was introduced. It was a time when the church found a new unity and solidarity in the general conference They were starting to organize and above all it was a time when a new surge of spiritual power and vitality when the tide of spiritual life began to run high and strong and a new type of church member of minister and of Congregation was being created.

It was also the time when a new generation of young leaders of different type men of Unusual ability and vigor took over the helm of the church It was a tremendous epic in the life of the church the breaking in of a new era Wow, do it again Lord do it again So Bender was very impressed with just when you look stand back from history and look at all that happened from this midnight the end of Baptist Great Awakening Then it's it's impressive The church then struggles, okay, all this is happening. But again, it's different extremes are happening there was a brother by the name of Henry Eggly a Bishop in Byrne, Indiana who had a genuine conversion passionate conversion and it began to insist that all the Amish in Byrne, Indiana should should have this kind of conversion and Began he got excommunicated and started his own fellowship But as the time goes on they began to lose the things that were all things of Christ and the people began to notice Daniel Brenneman also one of the ones Started to lose some of those all things of Christ and even began to pick up second work of grace Eradication theology and that type of thing. It's what made some people be cautious about what was happening and so the particular place where these revivals when this Great Awakening was happening the the place of resistance was Lancaster County and I love Lancaster County I do In Lancaster County had a conference meeting a conference meeting held 1893 where they came to talk.

What are we going to do about the revival meetings the protracted meetings and the conference decided quote a protracted meetings it is not considered prudent to allow protracted meetings a meeting at the Roarstown in 1894 a visiting evangelist John S wrote to John S Kaufman and he gives and here's a letter Directly from how he came out of this meeting of the Lancaster bishops talking about these revival meetings. And this is what the letter says Just I was at the conference yesterday near Lancaster. Our future is dark now for holding protracted meetings You know the bishops do the business in our conference They decided with but one dissenting voice to forbid the holding of meetings for more than once or twice in succession Days or evenings at the same place one or two days.

That's it The bishops were sustained by 57 votes against 12 for the meetings as we held them in our country I guess he's from Canada You see there was some concession by the bishops and allowing the ministers and deacons to vote The pressure for the meetings was too strong. So the bishops did not want to carry all the responsibility Not one minister in Lancaster County voted for the continued meetings. So the time of these meetings seems a good way off And that was written in 1894 and it seemed like the the cause of revival in Lancaster County was stopped But God and here's something that happened tragedy happened in the summer of 1896 a Young married couple by the name of Barbara Hershey and Enos barge Hershey was only 18 barge was 23 was riding their old I guess that have been Model Ts in those days and got hit by a train going 55 miles an hour She was instantly killed and he died a day later But they had never professed Christ in their church.

They were never converted and it shook the whole community of Lancaster County and they didn't know what to do with it and Someone then wrote in the newspaper or something at that time said we believe it is this is a warning sent by a kind Heavenly Father to all may we all and especially the unconverted Friends and companions of the departed ones not allow the solemn warning to pass Unheeded and it began to catch attention all around Lancaster County so they started to have their funeral services and guess what happened at their funeral service a spiritual awakening followed which brought about many young people into the church and at the funeral services people started to pour in and They started having churches were opening they were then opening up their nights and suddenly revival started to break out 43 were baptized in Groffdale 38 in Paradise 16 in Strasburg 21 at Old Road 49 at Hershey's Church services didn't finally open in the evening and the first time that it was open in the evening over a thousand people Attended the one in what I have here Strasburg Wow You know You can't stop revival when God truly wants to bring it in and God used this time to bring in revival At the time then they started to have conferences and then by 1903 the rules were changed and I have here the quote from the conference meeting of 1903 the Lancaster conference quoted as It reads a protracted meetings Protracted meetings are allowed when the officers of the church and the laity In their district believe it is the only way to build on the cause of Christ Such meetings to be subject to conference conference also allow to have meetings and they go on to give some specifics how they don't want To get too carried away But hallelujah, it was it was then allowed by the Lancaster conference bishops and they were allowed to bring in revival into this area and 80 wanger talks about this and a revival began to happen at one place in Elizabeth and Elizabethtown in 1906 a revival broke out there shortly after this conference and 123 people got converted at that one at that one meeting and so it was a powerful time of revival in Lancaster County but at this time also is World War one Getting up the Methodist now had lost their their their power amongst the Anabaptist people And I think Christian Burke Holder and some of the things sort of say they're baptizing infants.

They're going to war They're keeping oaths work that the Mennonites began to say, okay, obviously this is not we went too far with following some of this But there was a new group from Germany in the 1700s Also called the Church of the Brethren under the preaching of Alexander Mack who grew also in this time period and they were a kingdom Church, I wish I had a day to spend on the Church of the Brethren I appreciate them a lot and the Church of the Brethren were a kingdom church believed in a called-out people had non-resistance believed in adult baptism and But they were pietist from the beginning and meaning they they liked all this revivalism And so in this early days now become the 1900s It was a Church of the Brethren that would typically people if you left the Amish or left the Mennonite you began to the Church the Brethren but In revival preaching had changed its flavor a little bit a man by the name of Billy Sunday Who's heard of Billy Sunday Billy Sunday a fiery revivalist in Chicago began to preach and but mixed with this revival preaching He brought what a preaching about what I?

Know about drinking Prohibition and it began to further and further that the revival cause got wrapped up with prohibition And so now they would have revival services and you can listen to Billy Sunday sermon We have a few clips of them and his burden is prohibition. Well, they started then having meetings They would literally go house to house around Lancaster County Knock on the doors and ask you to please vote against the selling of liquor and making a United States Constitution amendment against it Surely they said any self-respecting Christian would vote on this issue Won't you just vote register to vote and get involved will outlaw alcohol.

Well, they pulled it off. They actually made it An 18th Amendment, I believe it is constitutional amendment that outlawed alcohol but the The the the whole feel of this began to bring unwittingly these people said, okay That's a good cause and there are more and more involved in politics Many of the Church of the Brethren who were involved even more so with politics began to rise up in politics until guess what? their own member a man by the name of Martin Grove Roomba a Church of the Brethren man ended up becoming elected governor of Pennsylvania Now you've got an Anabaptist governor of Pennsylvania.

Oops the revivals of were short-lived I mean the the The Prohibition was short-lived after it was finished and just a few years later in March 23rd 1933 the president Roosevelt after he signed the bill to end prohibition said I think this would be a good time for a beer As a matter of fact the you've ever seen the Budweiser horses At places the big Clydesdale They come marching up to the White House on that day with the big kegs of beer to give beer to the White House Billy Sunday's boys and all the time that he was going around preaching revival and and all that he was involved all that his boys Were involved in some of the worst scandals of the time and all the scandals that he was preaching against he didn't keep his home and and so in the midst of this revival now that got mixed up With politics and everything it got it got bad Broomball was tested as soon as he became governor a outbreak of Sedition happened in Pittsburgh, and he said what do I do now?

We called into the militia and had them and had them killed had them destroyed Later on World War one now starts to break out and he it wasn't even in place he broomball Brought back in the swearing of the oath of loyalty to the state and to his office by his board Several the German Baptists complained about this, but they said well We'll let the Philadelphia district deal with it and eventually nothing was done but now The the mixing of this World War one was very hard interesting and some of the worst cases of Mennonites going into the war happened from Percentage wise during World War one they had lost something the revival brought in something powerful, but somehow Funk's attempt of keeping the balance of keeping everything focused on Jesus and the all things of Christ did begin to

wane again and That affected them World War one was very hard it had You had people persecuted Mennonites persecuted and like I mentioned before There was Hutterites that were that were actually taken to Alcatraz and put into a cold dark dungeon And they said I'm not gonna wear the uniform and they just hung their uniform on the wall and said well if you get cold enough you'll wear the uniform and they were freezing to death had water thrown on them and all these sorts of things and finally they absolutely refused to wear the uniform and eventually they were taken from there to Fort Leavenworth and Died from the abuses they received in the prison of some martyrs of World War one so again It's been a challenge with Revival in the Anabaptist world and it has been since milkier Hoffman back

in in Holland And it has been still to this day of We like revival, but revival is the birth of the church remember keep remembering that Pentecost births the church And it's in what stands behind Pentecost is Jesus and the teachings of Jesus in Acts chapter 1 when it said that they were sitting there they were asking Christ before he ascended to tell him the things about the kingdom of God and They were wanting to hear those things and so Behind a true Pentecost is the kingdom of God So that had some collateral damage interesting a little quote from a book That I appreciate talking about about this time period During World War one also of course the Church of the brother and young men had a very hard time applying for conscientious objector well because they say well broomballs a

Governor and he even was running for president against Wilson And so they had a very hard time and even the brothers the Mennonites and the Amish had some problems one writing that was a letter from given in this time period Here's a quote from Time period says the brethren who for some time had been moving in step with believers and other Protestant churches Suddenly found themselves at the cross current of their non-resistant background and the position of those they had been working with the within the outreach of the church a Specially called conference of elders issued a statement against military involvement, but it was quickly withdrawn under government pressures Many brethren felt confused about where the church student stood Hadn't they worked hand-in-hand with other church

groups and social reform?

Hadn't they joined forces with them in the mission field I wrote We must remember it has to continually come back to Christ So war ones happening It kind of took a lull their revival and in all revival history whether you're studying Protestant or Anabaptist history The war is definitely hurt revival and the revivals in World War one After that you went through a big lull and World War two you went through a big lull But after World War two these revivals of the Anabaptist were kind of forgotten Forgotten it's interesting when you hear George Brunt began to preach He speaks about what will happen to him like it never happened to the Mennonites before he didn't even seem to know these things This had never happened before He's he proclaims It had been forgotten the war had brought into different things and now Lancaster County was growing Prosperous and all these different things and now we're entering to World War one and we're entering into World War two and now it's 1950 And the church after World War two was saying, okay, where are we now? the militarism the patriotism of the United States must have been huge in those days after the atomic bomb and all those sorts of things and the Mennonite Church knew it's time for us to organize again and And and have another serious awakening or if they didn't at least the spirit knew they needed this and so they begin to see in the gospel heralds and the and the different magazines a Proclaiming of let's get back and let's have our fiery fighting evangelism back the gospel 1952 says this gospel herald quote Revival has to do with the Christian Evangelism has to do with the ungodly Revivalism is the fire evangelism a major byproduct of the fire and then Again, the gospel herald by 1950 started posting articles Proclaiming let's regain and aggressive.

Let's get again an aggressive evangelism It said door-to-door evangelism and even it said the concept we need the fighting Church. Amen that was a spirit and The Lancaster County the Mennonites will across the country at this time period so it's 1950 revival had not been around for a while and Man by the name of George Brunk is is teaching Theology at Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisburg, Virginia, and he's there. It's interesting.

There's a sermon you can hear from today He's writing in 1950 It's the first sermon that Raymond Brunk sells in his sets of sermons and he's the staff This is before the Lancaster revival, and it's easy the staff at Eastern Mennonite College, and he's talking to them and he's talking about Conservative dress plain dress and it's interesting sermon. He says in there He starts talking about it and giving us reason to the student body and you could tell he's kind of apologizing to it there's a place in the Message where he says I'd like to make a prediction And it kind of pauses and he says I predict that if the Mennonite Church Ever loses its distinctive dress. It will become one of the most ungodly denominations in America And there's like a pause.

I Had that clip on my website if you want to hear it and That was the spirit of the different things that were happening in this time period of the church in the 1950s But then something happened there was a revival in Virginia and go to page 18 here and a revival in Virginia Lawrence and George were there and on the way back their sister reports that they Lawrence was just Inspired by what he saw in Virginia and wanted to do this more and more and he began to entertain the idea well Can't we do this full-time? What if we gave our whole life to preaching the gospel? This is just the beginning of people like Billy Graham and some of that was now popular at this time. They're saying well, why can't we do this? Why couldn't we proclaim the gospel like Billy Graham does in his circles? And so Lawrence wouldn't give it up He's she reports how they talked about it all the way back from Virginia But he wouldn't give it up and one afternoon Lawrence Brooks says stood in the midst of his poultry flock of 5,000 broilers and asked the the chickens and asked the Lord to give him as many souls as there were chickens So imagine you're standing in a big, you know chicken house. God give me as many souls as I see chickens here And then he says I'll make a promise Lord.

Okay, if I could sell enough chickens this year to clear $5,000 I'll put it into the ministry and I'll buy the equipment and we'll go on the road Well, the Lord came through for him and not only $5,000. He ended up with $35,000 Excess and so he was so excited. He uh, he starts to say, okay.

I've got to do this and and and there's a Interesting thing at one time George Brunk remembers that he was teaching college at Eastern Mennonite College And he gets a phone call and Lawrence is calling him and he says, okay, you know how we've been talking about this You know how it is guys when we start talking. Hey, wouldn't it be great if we hey, it would be great Well, it takes a Lawrence Brunk in your life to sometimes do things. I'm that way I'm a flaming visionary and sometimes I'll just batten out a bunch of flaming visionaries and someone finally says hey Why don't we do it? And that's what happens I get the impression George and Lawrence were getting that flaming visionary phase and Lawrence finally said let's do it So George talks about the time that he received his phone call and the phone call was yes or no I would go I have the money are we going on the road or not? And George Brunk's mentions that he wanted to go on the road and they did it at the same time.

Something is happening Lancaster County Different apart from George Brunk is beginning to feel the spirit of prayer when I became a student of revivals I really see that in all true revivals it seems lasting revival a spirit of prayer is there that seems to make the biggest difference and When I saw when I went to links, I went to the Historical Society Lancaster and I did not know what I'd find I wondered are you gonna find this in midnight revivals or not? And what I found I couldn't believe I started going through the gospel heralds of different accounts and there was eyewitness accounts of the of the prayer meetings that Predated the links to revivals of 1951 and it particularly happened at East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church and the minister was a man by the name of Murray's a layman and just a few days after the revival He begins to talk about these Extraordinary prayer meetings that they were beginning to have at East Chestnut Mennonite Church, and he says this this is directly from the minister quote One great factor in the success of this program was that the Saints of God prayed on Good Friday of this year 1951 we had a special day of fasting and prayer at the Vine Street Mennonite Church There it was announced that we would have special prayer meetings once a month besides our regular prayer meetings The next special prayer meeting was held on a Sunday afternoon at East Chestnut Street Church The meeting was well attended by and many prayers were offered and tears flowed freely We prayed for revival and for lost souls.

This type of meeting was followed by many more Didn't stop it goes on Someone in the prayer meeting suggested that there should be an early morning prayer meeting every morning So a meeting was called from 6 to 7 a.m The early morning meeting began at a large Sunday school room The Lord poured out his spirit on us as the numbers increased He moved to the main room of the church and in one morning meeting now Brunk had now come to town brother Brunk said so far in our prayer meetings We have we have been observing the second part of James 5 that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much I think tomorrow morning.

We ought to consider the first part where it says confessed your faults one to another but Brother stoner Crady said why wait till tomorrow? Let's start right now and they began confessing their sins to one to another Powerful stuff at this point Liberty was given in the group that confessed and gave their sins to God It says many prayer meetings that followed had a period of confession Many sins of the Spirit were confessed and tears were shed as a Holy Spirit searched our hearts the special early prayer meeting We're in session each morning from May 21st to May 20th, July 22nd 1951 and he says we believe that it was prayer that brought the Revival and he was writing this when it was still going in The gospel here at Herald and we and it will be prayer that will continue it Brother Brunk said that the early morning prayer meeting of July 22nd was the largest prayer meeting he has ever seen And And so as they as they went there It began to be more and more impressive impressive So once go down to check East Chestnut Street once George and Lawrence got to Lancaster the prayer meeting was already strongly underway the overwhelming response of the prayer meeting resulted and the Opening night attendance at East Chestnut Street was over 2,000 people if you look at East Chestnut Street now, you can go there.

There's a like a warehouse on the other side they put up a tent and they put up a tent and started to Have this revival meetings and the first one had already attended was over 2,000 people showed up and so you can see I call it the Lancaster revival I don't call it the Brunk revival because it was already happening Brunk just put a match to it from that it began to grow and grow into crowds of over 7,000 people were pouring into these places At the these links revivals finally they didn't even know what to do There were so many people turning out until finally they found that there was an old airport This airports not the Lancaster Airport, but there was a spot that's now behind Home Depot down there off of 30 And they said we're gonna have to get a bigger place. They got some more tents PVC pipe was just invented They were bringing in sewage bringing in electricity and they held us Well are any people gonna come and they came and they came by the tens of thousands They were not tens of thousands. They ended up with 12 to 15 Thousand people poured on to this this meeting and revival in Lancaster County in 1951 Wow the The reports of the traffic of what this was causing I went and I went I said well this had to make the newspaper So I went to the newspapers in Lancaster and found an interesting Accounts in the newspaper complaining about the Complaining about the The traffic and how they had to have special traffic things because of all the traffic jams that were there I found some other things when I was there in the in the library Here on the front page of the Lancaster newspaper This is our Lancaster newspaper, and this is cut right from them on the days of the revival Revival meeting leads Boyd to confess a $10,000 barn fire and things that they wouldn't even confess to the world They were confessing at the church and true revival was happening Here's some pictures of a close-up of down there And you can see here this thing right here was called the idol of Baal and They would throw your cigarettes in there your bad magazines your books and and people would repent and throw that in afterwards They would have a big burning here where they burn all these sinful things and it was powerful Later on this this grew they couldn't believe the response they were praising God for it And it went on it went on to the Franconia conference further east and the Franconian conference They said in there.

I also have quoted there for you We realized we could not ride on the coattails of Lancaster what brought revival in was prayer And what's going to bring it into to Franconia is also prayer for the the the Saints of Franconia began to pray and again outpourings came in to to To to hear To Franconia as well. I have personally interviewed men who were sitting in this interview One of my favorite is the Franconian cowboy with Willem Bergy do y'all know Bergy he's now at the church in Bedford and He was one of the biggest rebels in the Franconian district would we have he got the name Franconian cowboy because he would sling his rope and pull down mailboxes from his car and He talks about this beautiful testimony and still today 50-something years later when you talk to him about it He cries as he gives a testimony of what God did to him during his early Brunk revivals. It continued to grow it began to go on the road and Eventually, it started to even begin to take the notice of the press time magazine Began to to talk about this and here's from the quote from the August by the time 1952 time magazine said quote This week after 14 months of evangelizing through the u.s And Canada the Bronx are preaching the word in Goshen, Indiana to crowds of nearly 3,000 people a night at their previous stop in Waterloo, Ontario Attendance were even larger a hundred and five thousand during the four weeks of steady preaching including 1,500 people who made decisions for Christ Local Canadian pastors were so pleased with the results that some canceled their own services to let their congregations hear what the Bronx Preach this is all from time magazine at their first meeting in Lancaster PA Lawrence led the singing and George gave his maiden sermon a Vigorous appeal to elect for Christ and escape damnation a topic which Mennonites have always stressed the first night more than 2,000 jammed in their tents dozens were converted before Before the week was out.

The Bronx had to order a new tent said preacher George We preach a fundamental brand of religion, but we're not fundamentalist We're not modernist either. You don't have to be one or the other. It's interesting trying to find a balance there I appreciate that back to that Always hard to find the center That was right in time magazine Eventually this spread into Canada and and and fed into the different people and it was powerful the the peak of the revival lasted About two or three years when literally thousands and thousands of people were Were swept into the kingdom of God Impressive during this time the the church was just coming down to the 60s and 70s and Liberalism modernism hippie isms and all those types of things came against the church again, and it made it difficult eventually Bronx himself began to not do well between the two brothers and Eventually they those two split up which I grieves me and They that kind of really took the steam out of the of their particular campaign others picked it up man by the name of hammer another by the name of Augsburg er and different ones were also Spreading revival tents just like this around the country and it wasn't just Bronx This was a revival that was spreading throughout the Mennonite Church And the Anabaptist Church in general all around and so very very impressive Very impressive.

So as we look at the history of revival amongst the Anabaptist people A couple lessons few lessons Number one, I believe that God does work through revival I've seen it in our people since the days of Zurich. I've seen it in the Moravian and the Hutterites I've seen it in the the Holland Dutch Mennonites I've seen it in the Swiss Brethren. We've seen it in our country We've seen it over and over again And number one is I do believe God works through revival But again, one of my beliefs of revival is that Pentecost is the birth of what? the church Pentecost wasn't the birth of just a fancy meeting It was the birth of the church a called-out ecclesia a people of God Read what happened in Acts chapter 2 in Acts chapter 4 when God poured out his spirit and again and again I believe just like a four was repeated to he will do that.

The other lesson is there's always the Balanced swing that can hurt us. We we don't want to be close to everybody Who's not like us and so we end up sometimes being swayed away from the all things of Christ and we see that example that we must always come back if our Revival does not make us look more like Jesus. It's not true revival.

Do I hear an amen? All right. So that's the bottom line. We must always take it back to Jesus and as Fancy as the preachers may be as fancy what they're saying We should be saying the things that Jesus was saying and let's pray in our time period God can once again Raise up a church that would be able to stand for the teachings of Christ be a committed brotherhood That would establish his kingdom on this earth and have that Jesus fire that they talked about in Russia and living today Let's pray dear Heavenly Father.

Oh God as we hear these accounts and we think of our own times and how we're again in a kind of a time of lull and Dear Lord, we do pray that you would send your Holy Spirit upon the church again today Lord And I pray God that you would send a revival a true revival that makes us look like Jesus and Make us be your called-out people on this earth again Lord. Oh father Let us not be tricked to the left hand or to the right but to lift up Christ filled with your Holy Spirit Preaching the salvation of our God in our generation Well, we pray this we can not do this in our own strength. We ask you to do it.

It's in Jesus name. We pray Amen Amen. All right, you dismiss By the way quick historic note the only lasting piece of history that you can discover this this building is unchanged Home Depot is like right here.

You come down here and this is Lancaster Pump Company And it looks exactly like that to the day So if you drive by there, you can go there and this now surprisingly is a you is a used car lot So things didn't change much Uh, what's that? Okay, you know a Home Depot and the Sports Authority if you go behind the Home Depot, what is that? What's that? Mannheim Pike. Yeah, I think it's Mannheim Pike if there's a little shortcut that goes behind between Sports Authority and Home Depot will take you a road that'll come right up here And this is like a Toyota car lot dealership and you can find this building Lancaster Pump and and find out where the whole thing was Like this Our policy and our declared position is that God shall have the glory for every victory one These campaigns and let no human finger be touched ever Raise the touches because God shall be praised for every blessing that comes to us And so let's look to God tonight and expect from him the blessing that we need. I like to have that ready Wow Clear response from you As I ask you a few questions Like for you to come back, come back at me with a clear and ready response With a yes or no either one like for everybody to respond.

Yes or no Do you believe that the devil is against this revival? All right. Do you believe God is for it? Not only this one, but for the cause of revival. Yes or no? Thank you.

Are you looking in simple faith to God tonight for the blessing that we need? Yes or no? Now the vital question and comes last I want you to give me an answer. Yes or no on it Will you be obedient to the Spirit of God as he speaks to your heart tonight? Now, come on Thank you